Well, we're back from Japan now. Actually, it's been over a week since we've been back but both of us have been so busy working on pictures and catching up on our yard work that we have let the blog go without an update for a while. For our three or four dedicated readers, this must come as a huge letdown.
The last part of our trip to Japan went very well and in retrospect very quickly. Two weeks was the perfect length for the trip we have both decided. We got to see a lot and do a lot and by the time we got back to the Tokyo airport we were ready to get back to "normal life". When you're traveling like that, you don't have agendas and to-do lists like you might have while you're home and going to work every day. Traveling gives you freedom from the mundane. However, when you're moving around a lot on a trip you end up having issues with facts of life you might ordinarily take for granted. Things like having to find public bathrooms and having to learn a new public transportation system every three or four days. Finding decent and cheap restaurants and trying to get good sleep can also be a challenge. Don't get me wrong - we still love to travel! It's just that it can take something out of you.
Anyway, after Kyoto we traveled west again to Hiroshima. This was a very compelling part of the trip to me. During my 2002 trip I like to say that I was making a tour of 20th century mistakes. From the Cu Chi tunnels of Vietnam to the tomb of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square, from KGB torture museums to the horror of Auschwitz, I witnessed some of the many tragic mistakes made during the 20th century in the name of ideologies. Being at Hiroshima brought me back to the feelings I had on that trip. What could make one group of otherwise rational people do this to another group of people? I've heard the argument that A-bombing Hiroshima may have ended the war months early and saved thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives that would have been lost during a ground assault on the Japanese home islands. Still, how did things even come to that? It seems that the one constant throughout history is man's inhumanity to man.
After that sobering day at Hiroshima, we spent a day on the nearby island of Miyajima being tourists - feeding the deer, taking cable cars, snapping photos of iconic temples, etc. We even found time to sample a Hiroshima area culinary specialty that features a very thin pancake, some cabbage, fried egg, a filler of your choice (rice cake, tofu, cheese, chicken), and topped with a bit of BBQ sauce. I chose the rice cake and loved it.
Our last full day in Japan featured a couple train rides taking us back to Tokyo. For dinner we returned to the sushi bar we'd eaten at the first night in Japan and had another delicious meal. Afterward we took the metro to Shinjuku to take pictures of the many lit-up signs. I'm glad we did because otherwise we would have missed a part of Tokyo that we had sort of expected more of. The next morning we returned to the Tsukiji - this time to the actual fish market and not just to the outskirts! This was another memorable experience as we dodged the hustle and bustle while trying to capture a few photographs.
Now that we're back we plan to focus a bit on the house. We've got some projects in mind, some small and some large. Also, we're hoping for a summer filled with hikes, bike rides, and BBQs!
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